Botany Bay 21/10 - 30 Deg Plus Day

[Dangas]

Had a day off work on wed and what better way to spend it than to be out on the water. So i prepared the boat and gear the night before with the plan to go for a days fishing out on the bay. I went to bed that night in the doghouse so that i dont disturb the missus beauty sleep when i get up at 4am.

Started the morning trolling around cape banks for tailor/salmon at 6.30am with the only catch being a decent sized trev.

Guessing that the tailor reported to be feeding around the heads have moved on, i decided to go to the Sticks for some bream. Ended up with a few more trevs. Also witnessed a pod of about 20 dolphins swim by 2 metres from my boat ... watta sight.

Next stop was Molineaux point... again trevally. I cant stop catching them. I thought to myself "At least its trevs and not yellowtail" Anyway... what i saw next was one of the most amazing sights ive seen in my short fishing career. The water behind my boat seemed like it was starting to boil. It was bubbling and frothing, i see tails flicking through the surface. I hear someone scream out "salmon!!" ... there were literally hundreds of fish turning the water into froth ... so.... on comes the metal (about the same size as the small bait fish ive seen swimming around in huge numbers)

My reel starts screaming and i had to delicately play the fish for 10 mins or so. The biggest dilema was whether to risk tightening drag to breaking point or loosening it and risk getting spooled (10lbs line). Anyway end result ... landed 2 salmon both about 68cm mark, got smoked by 2, got 2 swollen forearms and one busted reel.

After ive had enough fun with the salmon ive decided to head back to the ramp when i see another scgool of fish surface feeding. Out comes the metal again and this time it was a school of chopper tailor. I lost count of how many i caught, but geez are they aggressive lure takers when they get into this feeding frenzy. It seems the school were all around the 30cm mark give or take a few cms so they were all throwbacks, but were loads of fun.

All in all, a beutiful day on the bay. Was nice just to be outdoors, the fish were a great bonus.

Edited October 22, 2009 by Dangas

[Basil D]

Good to hear dolphins are in the bay, it must means the water must clean at the moment, But also when the Dolphins are around the fish run for there lives

[henryqc87]

Hello every one, Dangus, luck was on your side. We went out today after dropped the kids off to school.

We saw thousand of black birds just of out of the Botany heads. There was alot of surface action. The fish was basically under and surrounding our boat.

We tried everything from metal slice, CD 11 rapala, surface popers, no takers. We stayed there for 2 hours.

Went back inside, it was very quite, caught few trevs. By this time it was 1 pm., time to go home and get ready to pick up the kids.

Hope better luck on saturday.

Henry

[Dangas]

Salmon are apparently very picky eaters when they get into a feeding frenzy to the point where they will only eat the one thing they are currently chasing and will ignore all other offerings thrown at them.

lucky for me my lure prob happened to be the same size and shape as whatever they happened to be chasing at the time. Tailor, however will attack anything that moves. i couldve thrown in my keyring attached to some fishing line and it wouldve had some hits from the tailor. too bad they were all small.

Edited October 22, 2009 by Dangas